Freefall
by thaliaarche
Summary: Ciel Phantomhive, Britain's star figure skater, returns to the Olympics. His rivalry with the U.S.' Sebastian— the rivalry that before drove Ciel to the podium— has settled into a casual friendship, leaving him unmotivated, even as he faces off with Claude Faustus and that odd, silver-haired sixteen-year-old. Ciel stands on increasingly unsteady ground . . . (Sequel to Precipice.)
1. Chapter 1

The short program gets 101.90. The free program gets 212.53. In combination, they might get gold . . .

At night, in a dorm at the 2022 Olympic Games, British figure skater Ciel Phantomhive dreams of winning, of springing onto the podium with that gilded circle heavy against his sternum as "God Save the Queen" echoes through the stadium, as his entire body thrums with the applause and cheering of countless spectators.

Is this what winning gold tastes like?

* * *

By morning practice, of course, the thrill of victory has drained away. As Ciel weaves his way around the rink, rehearsing a particularly finicky step sequence, his mind flits away from the ice, over and over again. He daydreams about going to the cafeteria and eating cake, or getting a massage from a physical therapist, or talking to someone who isn't a figure skater, for a change . . .

"Hey!" Grell, his coach, waves both arms in the air. He glides over to her, hands on hips, twisting to stretch out his sore spine.

"Ciel, Ciel, darling," she tuts. "You're on autopilot again."

"Wasn't the footwork right this time?"

"The footwork was right. The footwork was so damn precise it makes me want to shake you."

"So . . ." Ciel raises his eyebrows, "the problem is that I was correct?"

"No. Yes! You need to loosen up. Lose the robotic quality. Ack, how do I deprogram you . . ." She shakes her head, digging two hands into long red hair. "You're a hypercompetitive nut, right?"

Ciel sputters at that. "Sometimes I'm a little intense, but . . ."

"Well, I challenge you to out-skate your competition," she claps her hands together and then scans the rink, where his competitors zoom around. "Be more artistic than, oh, I don't know— Sebastian Michaelis! Battle him, destroy him on the ice!"

He pauses, glancing over at Sebastian. His old rival whirls at the opposite edge of the rink, deep in a layback spin that most male skaters would never even try, easily the most flexible and graceful athlete on the ice. After a moment, Ciel rolls his eyes. "Sebastian's a friend now, and I only wish him the best."

"Ciel," Grell groans, "you're killing me here. Come on, skate with panache and elan and vim! I want you to be extraordinary!"

"I wouldn't mind that either," Ciel remarks dryly, knowing full well that he ought to pull off a stellar performance at these Games. His routines play to his strengths, while his music is dramatic enough to mask his own lack of charisma. His body has never been stronger, has never before been capable of plowing through so many jumps without tiring . . .

Ronald Knox, the champion of the 2018 games, also had a brilliant routine and sheer physical power at the start of this season, and yet he's now in traction after breaking one of his legs and both his hips on a quad jump just a few weeks back. He's also now in retirement.

"Okay," Grell interrupts Ciel's reflections, "practice the quad flip, with a dollop of actual grace this time."

Batting away thoughts of broken careers, Ciel pushes back to the center of the rink and practices his peskiest element.


	2. Chapter 2

As Ciel enters the Village cafeteria, he hears a sound he's rarely heard before, yet he recognizes it at once. Sure enough, he spots Sebastian with his head thrown back, laughing bright and clear amidst a nearby cluster of figure skaters.

Ciel strides right over, ennui suddenly dissolved. "Hey, college boy!"

"Freshly graduated, actually," Sebastian looks over at him, still grinning. "UCLA, Winter 2022."

"Which degree did you eventually decide on?"

"I didn't decide— I double majored. Mathematics of Computation and Classics, focus on both languages."

"Nerd," Ciel teases. "I'll go get food, yeah?"

Strange though it seems, Ciel reflects as he stands in line, Sebastian's a friend now— or as much of a friend as he can be, given that he lives on a different continent and leads an even busier life than Ciel's and can't use social media without his father's permission. While Ciel has long since given up his silly crush from the 2018 games, he still views Sebastian with a healthy sense of awe— in addition to being an Olympic-level figure skater, the guy can read Latin and Ancient Greek, and he's been named co-author on an academic paper, and he dabbles in concert-level piano, and, somehow, he isn't an insufferable egotist.

When Ciel returns to the table with his tray, Sebastian's polishing off a lunch of roasted vegetables, hummus, and a lamb kabob on the side. Ciel's tempted to comment on the distinct lack of salad, but Sebastian starts talking before he can: "I can't believe you called me a nerd, Mister I've-got-all-of-Dungeons-and-Dragons-memorized."

"Not true, only 5e," Ciel shoots back, tucking into a salmon fillet. "I never got my head around 3.5, what with all the prestige classes."

"I swear one day I'll find out what that sentence means," Sebastian shakes his head. "And at any rate, I know you've got the ISU technical panel handbook memorized, word for word."

"It's only 30 pages long!"

"Yeah, you're at least as big a nerd as I am," Sebastian chortles. "Oh, pardon me for a second . . ." He springs up, approaches a tall, white-haired man who has just walked in— Ciel recognizes him as one of the Japanese coaches— and bows. "Tanaka-sensei, konnichiwa. Ogenki desu ka . . "

As the two of them start chattering away in fluent Japanese, Ciel's jaw drops. "Four languages, huh?" he mutters to himself.

"Seb's half-Japanese, and he decided it was about time he started acting it," a deep voice sounds from across the table, beside Sebastian's now-empty chair. Ciel glances up and sees a hulking frame, a square jaw, and a settled frown— Claude Faustus.

Claude's an American skater, trained by the very same coach as Sebastian, and he has stepped in at the last minute to fill Ronald's place on the Olympic team. Though they've never met in person before, Ciel's of course watched videos of his skating, grimacing as Claude rams through yet another routine set to crashing orchestral music. Claude's fans fawn over him, calling him "dark" and "brooding," and Ciel knows he's handsome, from the right angle. But he won't make the mistake of dwelling on that— Claude poses too much of a threat.

As he mulls all this over, Ciel reaches for dessert, and Claude speaks once again: "You're eating _that_ the week of a competition?"

Ciel looks down at his dessert, a bowl of ice cream— a very small bowl, in his opinion. "Uh, yes?"

"And how's that quad flip coming?" Claude replies smoothly.

Ciel half-chokes on a cookie-dough chunk.


	3. Chapter 3

"He's just jealous," Rachel commiserates with Ciel, who describes his conversation with Claude over dinner. He's eating out with his parents the night before competition starts, as Phantomhive custom dictates.

"Or . . ." Vincent says.

"Or what?" Rachel demands.

"Well, there's some rumors from across the pond."

Ciel starts laughing. "What is it with American officials spilling their guts to you every time—"

"Let your father finish," Rachel swats Ciel's elbow, though she's suppressing a chuckle as well.

"I heard," Vincent leans in, lowering his voice in conspiratorial fashion, "that Faustus had it in for Ronald, prior to his big fall."

"What does that mean?" Rachel frowns.

"It means that . . ." Vincent sighs. "Actually, I don't know what it means, exactly. Nobody had anything more specific to say."

Ciel rolls his eyes— he's no fan of Claude, but insinuations this vague prove literally nothing— and switches topics. "Did you two finally get tickets to synchronized skating?"

"We did!" Rachel exclaims. "You know skating tickets are always hard to come by, and it's the first time this event's at the Olympics, so I swear it's a miracle that we're getting in."

"I don't think I'd do well in synchronized skating, actually," Ciel muses. "Team sports are— icky."

"Yeah, other people would just get in your way," Vincent agrees.

"My god!" Rachel protests. "You two are terrible!"

"No, we're just honest," Vincent grins.

"But I do think it's great that the sport's evolving," Ciel says.

"It is," his father nods. "The advertising market's going to improve like nobody's business— well, like our business."

Rachel gives a mock groan. Vincent ignores her: "I can't wait to see what they add next— maybe a new scoring system? Maybe same-sex pairs? Maybe they'll bring backflips back into competition! Who knows!"

Though talk of change reminds Ciel of Ronald's retirement once again, he joins in his parents' laughter.


	4. Chapter 4

Ciel's first event at these games is the team competition. He runs through his pre-skate rituals backstage, listening to his freshly compiled competition playlist, filled with heavy metal music, specifically Djent. As he stretches, he shakes his head in rhythm and mouths the words, " _We paint the walls red! Murder the innocent!_ "

Though Ciel's not seeking to demolish any one person this year, the homicidal edge hasn't entirely faded from his skating.

At this moment, Sebastian, his only real competition in this event, is skating outside on America's behalf, but Ciel doesn't watch the routine. The score percolates soon enough through backstage whispers, and Ciel frowns, because it's lower than he expected.

Then he grins, because he'll easily beat it.

When his turn comes, that's precisely what he does. He skates his long program, no mess, no fuss, pulling off elements that he only dreamed of four years back. He stumbles a bit and underotates a jump, but those relatively minor errors don't dull the shine of an excellent program.

He won't win gold here— hell, he won't even win a medal, given the flaws of the other British skaters— but the audience is cheering madly, and that soaring feeling from his dream grabs him in real life.

Once the score comes out and officially bumps Sebastian down to second, Grell sweeps Ciel into her arms in the kiss-and-cry and practically carries him backstage, chattering away about his routine. She's exaggerating, he realizes— she must have been more worried about these Games than he had thought.

They hunker down to watch the last few competitors. Finnian, inexplicably tapped for a second Olympic outing, once again trips over his own feet, while Canterbury, Australia's entry, gives a thoroughly ordinary performance. Then comes the final athlete, a lanky sixteen-year-old draped in a black-and-pewter costume, with bright green eyes and freshly-dyed . . .

"Silver hair?" Grell mutters. "What the hell is he thinking?"

Ciel squints at the young skater now bouncing onto the rink, practically quivering with adrenaline. He's seen the guy skulking around during practice, sure, but he's never paid much attention. This skater's unheard of on the competitive stage— though originally from America, he recently moved to a small country with a ramshackle skating program, just in time to meet Olympic deadlines. Ciel knows nothing else about him.

"What's his name again?" Grell scrunches her forehead.

Oh, Ciel remembers one other thing about him— how could he forget?

"His name is Undertaker," he scoffs.

The skater— Undertaker takes his place at the center of the rink, and the music starts playing a second later. There's a honky-tonk piano, and French horns, and what might just be an accordion duet . . .

Then a crash of hyperactive drumming drowns them all out, and Undertaker bursts into action. He's all odd angles and elastic cortortions. He erupts into tightly coiled jumps. He shoots off in strange directions, like wisps at the edge of a fire. The whirlwind music slows briefly to focus on lilting, longing violins, and good god Undertaker's now drifting around in downright lyrical fashion, somehow weaving an element of poetry into this frenetic routine.

With a start, Ciel recognizes the music— it's the instrumental of that Avenged Sevenfold song, "A Little Piece of Heaven." He reels from another blow— Undertaker is utterly brilliant. His skating, though eccentric, has already racked up enough points to blow Ciel's score out of the water. It thrums with pep that Ciel feels too damn old to match.

"Who is this guy?" Grell gapes, articulating the thought of all the other skaters and coaches around them. "Where did he come from?"

"He came from nowhere," Ciel answers. "And he's the male's singles gold medalist of the 2022 games."

All at once, his dream of winning slips from his grasp. He turns and stalks away.


	5. Chapter 5

"Focus on the quad flip," Grell demands at practice the next morning.

Ciel tries, yet his eyes drift towards Undertaker. Really, almost everyone on the ice is stealing glances at the sixteen-year-old— even Sebastian, who normally concentrates solely on his own skating.

And yet . . .

Ciel attempts his quad flip, stumbles, and sweeps over to Grell once again.

"I feel like someone's watching _me_ ," he mutters, rubbing the back of his neck uneasily.

"You're not wrong," she relied drily.

"No," Ciel rolls his eyes, "I meant someone besides you."

"I know," Grell says. "Claude's been giving you the evil eye for twenty minutes."

He whips his head around, and Claude shifts his eyes away just at that moment. Shivering, Ciel scowls. "Why me?"

Grell raises an eyebrow, and he sighs, realizing that it's really quite obvious.

"Because with Undertaker in play," she explains anyway, "the podium won't be big enough for the both of you."


	6. Chapter 6

_"Humanity has fallen by the wayside . . ."_

As Ciel checks his laces one last time, he mouths song lyrics and pointedly ignores the fact that Claude is performing his short program right now, out there on the rink. A few minutes later, he heads to the side of the rink himself, and he finally removes the earbuds— only to be greeted by massive cheers for Claude, now receiving his score. By reflex, Ciel's eyes flick over.

107.7.

At the sight of that implausibly large number, Ciel's mental calculator whirs into action, and he realizes Claude likely stuffed an extra rotation onto one of his triple jumps, catapulting him far into the lead. Sebastian's personal best on a short program is down near 105, and Ciel's routine can't even break 102. Only Undertaker has any shot at beating this score, Ciel sighs. Then, as Ciel takes the ice, Claude smirks— not necessarily at him, but his breath catches nonetheless.

He falls on the quad flip.

The score places him in fourth, and he suspects Sebastian and Undertaker— both still waiting to perform— will bump him down to sixth. The podium wouldn't be quite out of reach yet, if only he could muster up the will to claw his way on.

He drifts backstage, past Claude, whose smirk has turned downright wolfish, past Undertaker, who's giggling madly while psyching up for his Charlie Chaplin-themed short program, past Sebastian, who's reaching out and grabbing him by the elbow and . . .

"Hey, Ciel."

Ciel looks at Sebastian— bright-eyed and a little breathless, though he's not due to perform for at least half an hour— and the haze suddenly lifts from his own mind. "What?"

A moment later, Sebastian lets go of Ciel. "Ignore me, I'm being ridiculous."

"Oh?" Ciel raises his eyebrows. "Well, now you have to tell me."

Sebastian pauses again. "I should talk to someone, if only to make my brain focus. Just hear me out, all right?"

"Of course."

"And please don't tell . . . people."

Ciel frowns at that. "If it's anything illegal . . ."

"What? No." He rolls his eyes and lowers his voice. "No, there's a boy."

Unbidden, Ciel's heart gives a little leap.

"He's got a tough, competitive exterior— armor, if you will," Sebastian goes on, "but there's got to be more underneath. When I'm around him, he makes me smile all the time. And that's . . . new for me."

"Is . . ." Pulse inexplicably racing, Ciel scrambles to form a coherent utterance. "Is he a skater?"

"Oh, _yes_ ," Sebastian closes his eyes and sways. "His style's utterly different from mine, but I adore it, even more than the judges do. I've never told him how much." He looks straight at Ciel, then, trying to stifle a grin. "You know who I'm talking about, right?"

Ciel's falling, floating, as memories of 2018 take him over once more . . . Swept up by a sudden high, he barely breathes the words, "Why don't you tell me?"

"It's Claude."

Claude. Of course it's Claude. Claude lives in the same city, they both train with William, they probably see each other on a daily basis. It makes perfect sense. Yet Ciel's head spins as Sebastian continues, "Obviously, I won't do anything until after the event, but . . . do you think I should go for it?"

"What?" Ciel shakes his head, not hearing.

"Should I risk my father's wrath and chase down young love?" He smiles as if he's joking, but his eyes are dead-serious.

Ciel takes a shuddering inhale, because he does wish Sebastian only the best. And if Sebastian has fallen for Claude . . .

"Absolutely."


	7. Chapter 7

Ciel flies from the rink, ice-laced wind biting his face red. He trips over the stairs to his room and slams the door behind him, breathing hard, pressing his face into his hands.

He's over Sebastian.

He pushes away the images of Sebastian skating, spinning his endless circles, inscribing his love and his hurt and his art onto the ice at 2018.

He's over Sebastian.

He forces himself to forget that Sebastian is as remarkable off the rink, with his degrees and his languages and his endless zeal for trying anything, everything new.

He's over Sebastian.

He dismisses the sweet music of Sebastian's laughter from mind, and he instead Googles "Claude Faustus." He stares at that inscrutable, punchable mug, at that oily hair, those plucked eyebrows, those brutish green eyes. As Ciel drifts to sleep, the crush of feelings drains away until only one remains, curled low in his chest— rage.

* * *

 _"The violence is out of control . . . Catastrophic creations!"_

Ciel bounces on the balls of his feet as he gears up for the long program, blasting his heavy metal at top volume. He's going to get himself on the podium. More importantly, he's going to beat the pants off Claude today. When he steps onto the rink just moments later, he's focused. He's got this. He's . . . slip-siding, about to topple.

He frowns, grabs the rink ledge to steady himself, and then lifts a leg to glance down at one of his skates. Yes, the blade is strangely dull. It fails to grip the surface below, disconnecting him from the ice, and he feels as if the very ground has fallen out from under him.

Why? These blades have been tailored precisely for his feet. They functioned perfectly just yesterday. Why in the world . . .

Oh.

He loops back to Grell, a grim look on his face. "There's something wrong with these skates."

Though she understands at once, she gasps. "Are you serious?"

"Would I joke right now?"

"Tell the judges, I'll go backstage."

Ciel shakes his head. "It's the men's locker room . . ."

"I'll enjoy the eyeful," she quips, trying to manage a smile. "Go."

She darts off, and Ciel drags himself over to the judges. He hauls one of his legs onto the table, and, even as low murmurs start humming through the stadium, he concentrates on coherently explaining that these blades that professionals have customized, checked, and re-checked are now unusably dull. He speaks in a measured tone, matching the judges' blank expressions, even as he builds towards that terrible conclusion . . .

"I suspect sabotage."

Some of the judges recoil, yet their impassive masks return in an instant. They lean back and confer, whispering, then bickering among themselves. Ciel counts his breaths, forcing himself to stay calm. Finally, they return the verdict— he may leave the ice and retry his skate, five programs from now.

God god, he's Tonya Harding _and_ Nancy Kerrigan.

He leaves, sweeping off the ice with as much power and pride as these ruined blades allow, then unlacing his skates and yanking them off his feet, finally disappearing backstage once more. There, he first sees Sebastian, who frowns at his quick return. "What happened?"

Ciel opens his mouth to spew a bloody tirade. He's got an excellent guess about what happened— and why it happened, and who's responsible— yet something stops him.

"Boot issues," he replies simply. "I'll skate after"— he counts five programs forward and barely keeps from rolling his eyes— "after Claude Faustus."

Ciel keeps his answer neutral, reining back all the accusations flooding his brain, because he hasn't got absolute proof yet, because he won't let Claude's sabotage take down Sebastian as well.

"So you're going to try skating anyway?"

As Sebastian walks away, Ciel whips around to find Faustus himself looming behind him, staring down with predatory eyes.

"Yeah." Ciel draws himself up to his full height of 5'2'' and meets Claude's gaze without flinching. "Thank god for Phantomhive paranoia."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I've got two pairs of skates, and, per my father's orders, I switch between them on a daily basis. Two pairs, both impeccably fitted and thoroughly broken in. Grell's fetching the other pair right now. Isn't it fortunate?"

With that, Ciel breaks out his most dazzling, winning smile and beams up at Claude, all the while imagining how it would feel to gouge the guy's eyeballs out and peel off his skin.

Claude blinks and turns away, and some sane fragment of Ciel's mind reasons that a blink might not signify red-handed guilt. Yet his hatred of Claude seeps further into his muscles, swelling far beyond his contrived jealousy of Sebastian from 2018. He stands stone-silent by the rink as Claude performs, clutching his back-up skates to his chest, preparing to obliterate the smug cheat. Though he doesn't normally put stock in supernatural powers, Ciel wills bad luck in his direction, and— behold!— Claude falls on two of his precious quads.

The score is high, by any reasonable standard, but to Ciel it seems deliciously low. Given that the long program is Ciel's strength this season— his sheer stamina lets him cram in a ridiculous number of high-scoring elements— he can make up the gap from the short program and surpass Claude.

Ciel can't get his headphones back out, but his brain supplies his music. " _Constant is the parade of ashes! Keep the distraction, bat those lashes . . ._ "

He glides back out onto the rink, pasting that same sparkling grin onto his face, flashing a particularly long look at Claude before taking his place at the center of this circus. Once the music commences, he shoots off jump after jump with a sniper's precision. He flies and spins at breakneck speed. His step sequences slice the ice like a scalpel. He imagines himself as a fireball blazing across the ice and burning everything in its path, yet he keeps shining that showman's smile at his audience.

213.05.

Higher than he dared hope, Ciel's total score smashes Claude's to pieces, and he leapfrogs to the lead. Only two skaters remain— Sebastian and Undertaker— and Ciel hopes his successors both top Claude's score as well, banishing that bastard from the podium.

Grell hurries Ciel backstage, all the while squealing at the top of her vocal range, and she immediately plops down to watch the end of the competition. After a moment, he joins her.

Sebastian dances as if in a dream. His eyes pass over the spectators without seeing them, while each lilt of the music flickers across his face. He weaves between spins that blur with speed and quad jumps that seem somehow effortless and impossibly intricate footwork. He stretches past the limits of the human body— or of most men's bodies, at least— shoulder-length hair swirling unbound around his face, his frame soft and slender and kissed by a fey elegance.

This time, the judges do not deny Sebastian's magic. Ciel sighs with relief, even as Sebastian steals the gold from him.

Then comes the sting of disappointment, and Ciel turns his thoughts to Undertaker. He hopes this last competitor will soundly beat Claude, of course. Yet, as Ciel considers the possibility he might lose his own silver medal because of this upstart, the nastiness building up all day settles deep into his bones.

Just then, Sebastian dashes in, still breathing hard, cheeks flushed a ruddy pink. His coach follows close behind. Upon spotting William, Grell's smile twitches, and she says, "I need to speak to you."

Before William can reply, she's up, pushing him away into a side room. Sebastian looks at Ciel, gives a confused shrug and then gestures at Grell's spot. "May I?"

"Go ahead," Ciel waves a hand, yet his eyes are locked on the screen as Undertaker enters the rink.

Sebastian sits, wincing as the accordions once again echo through the stadium. "He's got questionable taste in music."

At that, something in Ciel snaps. He leans forward with a downright villainous grin. "Questionable? More like horrific."

As Sebastian chuckles a bit, Ciel focuses further on Undertaker, now attempting his first triple axel, and narrows his eyes. "He overotated that."

"Did he?" Sebastian squints. "I suppose it's harder for me to tell on a screen—"

"And then he wobbled on the landing."

Sebastian falls silent. Ciel continues, "Now he's yoyoing through the choreography. Going with the flow of the music is one thing, but this just looks frantic. And look, look, he started that rotation too early . . ."

"That won't cost him much," Sebastian frowns, "if they take off anything at all."

"He just flutzed a lutz," Ciel cackles. "What a newbie mistake."

"Well, he is a newbie," Sebastian says. "And his program could beat us all, even if he ditched that jump entirely."

"Come on, look at the footwork, he's hopping around like some sort of bizarre puppet."

"You sound cruel."

"I—" Ciel turns to gape. "I sound what?"

"Cruel, and unjustifiably so."

Ciel's about to protest when out of the corner of his eye he sees Undertaker misaim his path, ever so slightly. As the skater launches into yet another explosive quad, the back of his blade snags on the rinkside wall, and his own momentum instantly knocks him forward, into the ice. He can't quite put out his hands to break the fall.

Blood.

Undertaker lies splayed on the ground, unmoving, like the corpse at a murder scene. Spectators scream. Medics rush onto the rink. Ciel stares, transfixed.

The blood pools red on spotless white ice, pouring through matted silver hair from a crack in the sixteen-year-old's head.

* * *

 _A/N: Ciel's theme song in this story is Periphery's "The Parade of Ashes."_


	8. Chapter 8

_"Will the canvas we paint with our hands spill the blood of our youth in the sand?"_

By the time Ciel regains his composure, Sebastian is gone, and Ciel's mind misses the Olympic medal ceremony for the second time. He stands on the podium with Sebastian in the center and Claude on the other side, dazed as "The Star-Spangled Banner" plays. Though he tells himself over and over that he had nothing to do with Undertaker's fall, he cannot meet Sebastian's eyes.

Undertaker lives, albeit with a career that's over at age sixteen and a likely broken brain and a string of stitches across his face.

The investigation into the sabotage of Ciel's skates lasts several days before finally revealing that the culprit was Canterbury, a skater on the verge of retirement, caught just behind Ciel at seventh place after the short program and desperate to break into at least the top five. He came forward to officials, admitted to dulling Ciel's blades, and then burst into tears.

Grell visits Ciel's room after the news breaks. "So, Canterbury, huh? Did you see that coming?"

"To be honest," Ciel sighs, "I thought Claude did it, but his alibi says otherwise."

"Convenient, how he was talking to all those other skaters right then."

Ciel hears a strange tightness in her voice. "Are you alright?"

"And I saw Claude talking to Canterbury earlier in the cafeteria, and he is a sticky little manipulator . . ."

"Grell?"

"I'm sorry," her voice cracks, and she dabs away two tears, trying not to smudge her makeup. "I just . . . told Will what I thought Claude did, and now we're not speaking anymore."

She gives a sniffly laugh.

* * *

On the last night of the Games, the British athletes throw a party for all Olympians. As strobe lights sparkle and club music throbs, Ciel sits by the wall, watching Sieglinde Sullivan— a German speed skater and two-time silver medalist like him— as she chatters on about the new skate laces she's designing for her thesis in sports science. Ciel tries to concentrate, yet his memory drifts back to one of his post-medal interviews. It was a perfectly average interview, with a perfectly average question: "When you're out there fighting on the ice, what do you skate for?"

He skates to defeat adorable sixteen-year-olds who crack their skulls open.

He skates against Claude. Or Sebastian. Or whoever his villain-of-the-week is.

He skates for Britain. This is the answer he says aloud.

He skates for . . .

What the hell does he skate for?

He thinks of his own career, doomed to end in a few years, of his own life, doomed to end some years after that, both rendered utterly pointless by the travesty currently unfolding in front of his eyes . . .

"Would you like to make out?"

Sieglinde's question shakes him from his reverie, and for just a moment longer he stares over her shoulder, at where Sebastian is pressed against a wall, eyelids fluttering closed, lips locked in a deep kiss with Claude.

"I would."

Ciel turns to her, pushing off the existential questions for another day.

* * *

Ciel and his existential angst will return in _Impact_ , the third story in this series. So will Sebastian, Grell, and a certain villain by the name of Faustus . . .

 _Impact_ is already available on AO3 (just search "Impact thaliaarche" and you should find it!).


End file.
